worthy of being paid some price for?

This goes against our notion of intimacy; but then our notion is wrong,
as is shown daily by the quarrels and recriminations of intimate
friends. One can be natural, _with a difference_, which difference means
a thought for the other. There is a selection possible in one's words
and actions before another--nay, there is a manner of doing and feeling
which almost forestalls the necessity of a selection at all. I like the
expression employed by a certain sister after nursing her small brother
through a difficult illness, "We were always Castilian," she said. Why,
as we all try to be honest, and hard-working, and clever, and more or
less illustrious, should we not sometimes try to be a little Castilian?
Similarly, my friend of the silver wedding once pointed out to me that
marriage, with its enforced and often excessive intimacies, was a
wonderful school of consideration, of mutual respect, of fine courtesy.
This had been no paradox in her case; but then, as I said, her
twenty-five years of wedlock had been years of courtship.

Courtship, however, should not be confined to marriage, nor even to such
relations as imply close quarters and worries in common; nay, it should
exist towards all things, a constant attitude in life--at least, an
attitude constantly tended towards.

The line of least resistance seems against it; our laziness, and our
wish to think well of ourselves merely because we _are_ ourselves,
undoubtedly go against it, as they do against everything in the world
worth having. In our own day certain ways of thinking, culminating in
development of the _Moi_ and production of the _Uebermensch_, and
general self-engrossment and currishness, are peculiarly hostile to
courtship. Whereas the old religious training, where it did not
degenerate into excessive asceticism, was a school of good manners
towards the universe as well as towards one's neighbours. The "Fioretti
di San Francisco" is a handbook of polite friendliness to men, women,
birds, wolves, and, what must have been most difficult, fellow-monks;
and St. Francis' Hymn to the Sun might be given as an example of the
wise man's courtship of what we stupidly call inanimates.

For courtship might be our attitude towards everything which is capable
of giving pleasure; and would not many more things give us pleasure--let
us say, the sun in the heavens, the water on the stones, even the fire
in the grate, if, instead of think